ue, but the stick was ruined for its usual
purpose. Blackened and charred as it was, it was only fit for putting
back into the fire again as fuel. Even to Bella's childish mind the
foolishness and wickedness of such a hasty action was only too plain.

A moment later, when the copper-stick itself was wanted, it was unusable,
and there was no other at hand. One would have to be bought, or made,
or found. While looking for something that would do in place of it, the
poker was found lying on the table, amongst the pans and things littered
there. This only made Miss Hender more irritable than before.

"To think it should have been there all the time, and me wasting all that
time looking for it!" she exclaimed, as indignantly as though the poker
were actually to blame.

In the corner of the scullery was a chair with one leg loose, waiting for
the father to find time to mend it. Miss Hender's flashing eye fell on
this, and seizing the leg and plunging it into the boiling copper, she
lifted out the clothes into the washing-tray with it. The chair leg was
dusty and it was covered with yellow varnish and paint, but in her foolish
and senseless rage she never stopped to think of this, and for months and
months after the stains on the clothing stood as a reminder and a
reproach, for not even time and frequent washings could remove them
altogether.

Bella turned away miserable enough. The chair was ruined, of course, as
well as the clothes, and she was old enough to understand the wicked waste
such an outburst of temper may cause.

"It was one of those mother saved up for and bought," she said to herself,
the tears welling up in her eyes, "and she was so proud of them.
I wish father had mended it at once, then it wouldn't have been lying
about in the scullery, in her way."

A voice from the garden, though, drove the other thoughts from her mind;
it was Margery's calling softly to her, "Bella, I'm so hungry. Give
Margery something to eat, she's so hungry."

Bella's misery deepened to anger against the cause of all this
wretchedness; the bad-tempered woman who was spoiling all their happiness.

"It isn't her house," she argued to herself; "it's father's house, and
ours, and I am sure he wouldn't have Margery or any of us go hungry.
It is cruel to starve a little thing like that, and I've a good mind to go
to the larder and get her something to eat."

But fear of the storm such an act would raise, and fear lest some o